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Monday, August 6, 2012

Sally Hansen PR sent me a gift bag with tons of nail strips (and a couple bottles of forgettable polish). I'm still giddy.

I love these things for pedicures (Misbehaved was one of my Top 5 pedi colors of 2011). Love love love love love. They (1) are durable and don't really chip unless your nail is flaking, (2) are generally eye catching and fun, and (3) are mind numbingly easy to apply (start with clean and prepped toes, bend over, stick, pull, and file off the excess. boom done).

Frankly, it's for all of these reasons that I don't like them for manicures. (1) Pay the same amount for a strips package (which has a couple manis in them if you cut the stickers in half - yay nubs) that you would for a bottle of polish (which has 30 manis in it) and you'll want to wear your strips for as long as you can. (2) The majority of the patterned strips are simply not work appropriate so I need to relegate them to my toes anyway. (3) I find a sort of therapy in the evening meditation that is my multi-step manicure ritual. Pushing a sticker on to a clean nail, is friggin awesome when I'm in a rush, but doesn't leave me satisfied when I want to, you know, DO a manicure. (Am I weird with that? Anybody else revel in their manicure ritual?)

So anyway - here are some of the strips I've tried. Some I loved and some I hated.

Brattlesnake

Loved! Wore it as a mani for a week. Because of it's coloring, from afar it just sort looked like a nude on me. I really liked it.

Toe-Riffic

This is one of their "pedicure strips." I've noticed that there is a difference between the nail strips and the toe strips beyond sticker sizing: The toe strips are thinner and a little stickier. While it does make for trickier application, the finished product felt less weird on my nail (not so heavy and sticker-like).

This is just a quick a dirty nail application just so you can see it (you will never get a pic of my toes) - but it's on my toes right now! Compliments everywhere. So friggin fun. But never in a million years would it go on my hands.

Aflorable

This one was blah. I actually did wear it on my hands because the coloring on the leaves isn't cray. but ehhhhh - so uninspiring.

I think this was pictured after a couple days wear. Yet another reason why they're better for toes than for hands - these things may not chip but do you see the tip wear? Yet tip wear, for me, is strictly a hands issue. Mainly because I don't type with my toes. so...... yeah.

Tie-dye For

OMG I hated this one with a passion. The strip seemed really thick with this one. It was really heavy on the nail. It also violates one of my cardinal rules for nail patterns - it uses white as the base. It just screams "this is a sticker!!!!!" to me. Compare this Brattlesnake or Toeriffic, which could be mistaken for really good stamping or dotting skills, respectively. There is nothing this could possibly be beyond a sticker. Awful.